"FILMMAKERS don't let it be Dead at 47": To give an off-the-top-of-my-head brief history of Pittsburgh Filmmakers that should probably be vastly improved upon: Filmmakers was started in 1971 as a cooperative of curators & photographers & moviemakers to share equipment & sponsor screenings.  Over the decades it grew into a facility with a school & darkrooms & places for projection & a gallery, etc..  I 1st visited it in January of 1995 when it was located on Oakland Avenue in Pittsburgh.  I moved to Pittsburgh a year later.  Sometime around that time it was relocated to Melwood Avenue.  There were 2 theaters under its control in other neighborhoods & there was the Melwood Screening Room at its main facility.  The school was booming, the facility was large, eventually a classroom screening room, the Mini-Melwood, came into being so that there were 2 theaters in the Melwood facility.  Pittsburgh Filmmakers was a happening place.  Many interesting & creative folks passed through.  In 2006 or thereabouts Filmmakers merged with the endangered PCA (PIttsburgh Center for the Arts) & enabled the Pittsburgh Biennial to continue.  Some consider this merger to have been the beginning of the end saying that Filmmakers had its own problems & couldn't afford to bolster up the failing PCA.  Personally, I like the PCA & the Biennials.  I had work in 2 of them & was nominated "Artist of the Year" twice there (didn't happen).  It's probable that Filmmakers's economic dependency was on student enrollment & that that enrollment declined as the various universities in the city created their own film & video departments & stopped sending their students to Filmmakers.  Whatever the case, & I won't get into my own critiques here, by 2018 it was announced that the Melwood complex was up for sale & that Filmmakers as many of us have known & loved it was about to metamorphize into something much smaller — if not disappear altogether.  Under this gloomy threat, the Film Kitchen, a monthly screening series that's been running for 20 years, organized a screening to reflect on Filmmakers's history.  I was honored to be a part of this.  Because of general community concern over Filmmakers's decline, the event was well-attended & many people who'd had long histories with the place attended even though their jobs had been terminated in recent years & there was some reason for bitterness.  In a very spontaneous attempt to document the spirit of this event I shot footage of the following principle players: Bill O'Driscoll, Brady Lewis, Carolina Loyola Garcia, Chris Smalley, David Bernabo, Emmett Frisbee, Gary Kaboly, Ivette Spradlin, Joe Morrison, John Cantine, Laura Jean Kahl, Matthew Day, Mike Bonello, Phat ManDee, Ross Nugent, Sue Abramson, Will Zavala & others more peripheral but still interesting.  Tom Fisher & Stefano Ceccarelli shot testimonials from attendees & I use 2 excerpts from mine as part of this.  All in all, it was an amazing evening — full of the community spirit & forthrightness & creativity that make Filmmakers a truly remarkable place.  If & when the Melwood building is sold, it'll be a collosal act of stupidity made by people with no understanding whatsoever of anything other than money.  I'd be willing to be Filmmakers's CEO for 1/3rd of what they paid the last guy.  I couldn't fail any worse than he did.  - August 23, 2018 note from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE  

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